From Booze To Bargains: How Big Data Is Shaking Up How Retailers And Brands Sell

Data analytics is disrupting how retailers merchandise stores, while also changing how business is conducted for the consumer products brands that line their shelves.

While retailers and brands have been analyzing data for years, the reams of consumer information generated in the era of online shopping, coupled with the rise of technology equipped to handle the digital deluge, is upending the way stores and their suppliers evaluate how to sell, what’s selling, what’s not, and why.

Understanding Shopper Footprints Via ‘Kinetic Mapping’

One high-end hardlines retailer found that a competitor was “killing them” on the launch of a hot electronic item, said Shelley E. Kohan, vice president of retail consulting for RetailNext, which provides in-store analytics to retailers, during a Retail Marketing Society seminar in New York last week.

The retailer turned to interactional analysis — insight on how sales associates and customers engage within a given store environment — to understand where it was going wrong. Via kinetic mapping, which illustrates the movement of both shoppers and employees, the retailer found that shopper traffic was tepid where the electronic item was being featured in the store.

Based on recommendations from RetailNext gleaned from its data findings, the product display was pushed beyond the first few feet of the store and out of the “decompression zone,” an entry area shoppers use to literally decompress and adjust to the new space after coming from the outdoors.

Store associates were also offered training demos to sell the electronic item based on its high-tech attributes as well as its differing appeal to both men and women. The changes paid off. "The retailer has continually expanded the enabling technologies in more stores to increase sales and improve the shopping experience,” Kohan told Forbes.